| Author |
Message |
Frances
| | Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2000 - 10:16 am: | |
First, sorry I expect this has been gone over time and time again - but when in "lost all my stuff" panic - you just need to scream for help!!
I cannot boot my PC. It really reads like the hard drive is busted (PC less than 12 months old - but they would take months to fix it on their guarantee and it would COST!)
On loading, I get:
Detect IDE Primary Master [press F4 to stop]
Makes no difference if you press F4 or not - the IDE Primary Master and Slave come up as "none".
Then we get DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSTERT SYSTEM DISK. I go through all that (many, many times) adn get an A:\ I type in C: and get "Invalid drive specification." Zilch. I've looked at the CMOS and "a" Primary Master is listed - just don't seem to be able to access it.
I've tried booting up Linux instead of Windows, but get
"Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:03"
I know it sounds obvious that the hard drive is knackered, but this happened two nights ago and when I turned on in the morning - it was OK again. It's been fine since - til this afternoon, when my system froze and I had to turn off at the mains (tut!).
Thanks to anybody who can help me on this. I just need to know the worst and then deal with it. The thought of losing absolutely eveyrthing is awful - but I'd rather have a working pc with nothing on the harddrive (a new one obviously!), than have no pc at all over Christmas!! (oh, perish the thought!)
(This is my son's PC I am using; thank goodness for small mercies!) |
win
| | Posted on Thursday, December 21, 2000 - 12:45 pm: | |
have you considered trying another harddrive from another computer and see if it does detect it?
try doing an auto detect in the bios, too. could be the motherboard bios.
possibly. |
Gabriel L.G.
| | Posted on Sunday, January 21, 2001 - 5:38 am: | |
Just check your IDE-cables it sounds to me that one of these is not put in properly.
gabriel L.G. |
Donovan
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 9:40 am: | |
i had that problem once...and the jumper was just wrong...food for thought  |
Trish
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 1:58 pm: | |
I realize the original post is rather old, but for future reference...
The first time it does boot, first...backup those files you don't want to lose. Then I'd start running some drive diagnostics and see if any problems are detected. If you have Norton Disk Doctor, that's a good one to start with.
Hopefully, Gabriel is right. |
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